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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26571283">Etymology</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/baezil/pseuds/baezil'>baezil</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>having feelings about yeerks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 10:56:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>265</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26571283</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/baezil/pseuds/baezil</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>We weren't always an empire. So few of us ever knew the homeworld; we remember through our names.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Etymology</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The names are echoes of what many of us have never known.</p><p>Sulp for the sound-feel of the night-pool when the turn toward dawn awakes the winds that stir the surface to gently suck at the muddy bank.</p><p>Niar for the sound-feel of the Gedds around our pool, the sound of them calling one another to the water, the sound that means a maybe-host, the sound that means hope.</p><p>Esplin for the sound-feel of a yeerk’s rush to feed in the midday rays, the rush  that stirs the surface that slaps against a stony bank.</p><p>Aftran for the greeting and response of two siblings in the lightless bottoms of a cool and viscous pool, two who think to search for each other at the same time and find that they are already close beside one another and need not search at all.</p><p>Illim for the sound-feel of tongues on the surface of a lowered pool in the driest days of drought</p><p>Temrash for the gentle impacts of a crowd of siblings and then the unexpected, unobstructed flow along your body as you find yourself suddenly alone in the middle depths. </p><p>Yeerk for the first sound-feel, the high swelling overflow of noise that bursts from your body as a grub, the one that speaks you to the others, the self-announcement, the first sound you hear, the first time you know yourself to be something separate from the water and the mud and the detritus, the sound you make as you pull yourself from the sluggish currents of the bottom ooze and, for the first time, swim.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Just... if yeerks are as isolated and senseless as everyone in the books pretends, where did they get words? I like to think their language is just as much felt as it is heard, with their whole body being a receptor.This is just a little scribble thinking through where their words come from, how living in a yeerk pool might affect the way you think about words, and the little hints of pre-empire yeerk culture that we do get. First posted to my tumblr back in 2016.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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